


Dust in the Wind

by dandelionwhiskey



Series: The Big Sleep [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dead Winchesters, Dissociation, Heaven, Heaven Politics, Humor, M/M, Rituals, Team Free Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-04-01 21:44:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4035625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandelionwhiskey/pseuds/dandelionwhiskey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Sam wake up in separate Heavens and with the help of Castiel, work to find their way back to each other. </p><p>This is a series with many different threads. All of the tagged pairings will happen, but not all at once, and not exclusively.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dust in the Wind

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a series with many different threads. 
> 
> If you aren't a fan of either Wincest, Sastiel, Destiel, or Wincestiel, you should still be able to read the series without seeing a pairing you dislike. The plot driven parts will be Gen or ambiguous. All the pairing/sexual pieces will be optional and fully tagged (There are no pairings in this first part but I thought I'd warn for where it intends to go). 
> 
> I've currently mapped out 8 parts to the series, but we'll see what it ends up being. Enjoy!

To say Dean was confused would be a muddy comparison to his sudden consciousness.

He woke lazily, he thought, eyes blinking open against a soft light that drew him toward it invitingly. It was usually at this point where Dean would yawn and stretch his arms high above his head, but neither sensation kicked in. There was no grogginess behind his eyes, no ache in his bones.

He was fine.

Something was very, very wrong.

That is to say, his rightness felt very wrong, which was somehow exactly what it needed to be and nothing close to what it should be at all. Dean smiled and sat up, climbed to his feet, and blinked.

The air had the carnival-scent of motor oil and fried food, something that reminded Dean of gum stuck to his boot or Sam’s face covered in cotton candy. In front of him was just dirty asphalt, miles of it, open and empty and winding around grassy hills. Dean ached to follow the road, to get into his Impala and ride her until she couldn’t run anymore. He leaned against her; she was there, naturally. The engine was warm and rumbling against his back and Dean got in, hands flexing against the steering wheel.

He flipped on the radio and smirked, turning the dial high and unrolling his window. The warm, sweet air whipped over his face as he drove, fast, so fast the green pastures around him were a soft-edged blur. 

_Got no time to for spreadin' roots, the time has come to be gone._

“And to our health we drank a thousand times, it's time to ramble on,” Dean sang. 

And then he slammed on the breaks.

The car was stopped. He didn’t feel it stop, there was no lurch or seatbelt digging into his chest, no screech of the tires. He just wasn’t moving any longer.

He wasn’t breathing. His heart wasn’t beating. 

Memories struck him like a baseball bat to the head; _one, Sammy, reaching for him, hands couldn’t find him in the dark, but it wasn’t dark, there was just blood in his eyes, stinging and wet. Where was the blood coming from? Had to stop the bleeding._

_But Sammy was saying his name like, a lot, like over and over and scared. “M’alright,” Dean mumbled, tried to wave him off, but his wrist was broken._

_“I’m not,” Sam said, and adrenaline pierced through Dean. He could see and Sam was so pale, like that off-white eggshell bullshit color Lisa wanted to paint the kitchen. He was white except for his chest, his stomach, all the ruby red of blood and guts and Dean couldn’t believe Sammy was still breathing at all._

_“You hold on, Sammy,” Dean said, but his vision tunnelled black. “You hold on.”_

_“Dean, you’re - no, Dean, no, no, no.”_

_But Dean wasn’t dead, and Sam was crying like he was, and he could feel Sam’s wet tears on his own face. Dean couldn’t move, not anymore. His brain stopped even trying to send those signals and his fingertips weren’t even tingling._

__Yo, Cas, _Dean sent out, felt Sam collapse next to him, weakly curling his fingers against Dean’s._ See you on the other side.

So, Dean leaned against the Impala, the air considerably cooler, and sighed. The memory was itchy and unclear, but staunchly real and he ran a hand through his hair, wondering if it would be okay to smoke now that he’s already dead. 

Dead. Again. 

He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and rolled his eyes. Well, at least he made it to Heaven after all that. All he had to do now was find Sam. His stomach lurched guiltily; if Sam were here that would mean he didn’t make it. But Dean knew he didn’t make it; the state he was in left nothing about his insides to the imagination.

So, he’d find Sam, and Cas would visit them, and things would be okay.

His cigarette tasted like rhubarb pie and he decided to start driving again.

From what he remembered about the last time they’d ended up here, following the road was imperative. That’s how he’d ended up at Sam’s first Thanksgiving and Sam’s dirty apartment and Sam’s exodus from the family. Dean grit his teeth at the unpleasant memories and floored the car a little harder.

That had been Sam’s Heaven, but that had been years ago. Before they’d stopped the Apocalypse, before Sam lost his soul, before Purgatory and the Trials and Dick fucking Roman. And so much, so much had happened to them between then and the moment Dean was sitting in that car, he couldn’t help but wonder what Sam’s Heaven would be now. 

Maybe it would be movie night at the bunker with Charlie (though if she were here, Dean would kick her ass). Maybe some memory with Amelia or beers on the beach with Dean. Maybe they’d finally racked up enough good memories that Sam would pick one that included him.

Or maybe Sam didn’t make it up here at all.

But Dean knew that Castiel wouldn’t allow that to happen. If Sam’s soul even inched downstairs Cas would burn his hand off if it meant grabbing it and returning him to Heaven. If Dean was sure of anything, it was that.

It hadn’t taken long for Castiel to visit him last time he was here, to give him direction; he’d been cut off by Zachariah back then but now, Dean was beginning to get irritated. He knew Castiel had big fish to fry, but Dean had grown accustomed to a certain level of attention and he damn well needed some of it now. He’d just died, for crying out loud.

He idly tapped the radio speaker. “Cas? Breaker, breaker.”

Nothing but the low hum of Stairway to Heaven. Dean rolled his eyes. 

Time didn’t really pass, or maybe a lot of it did, but Dean felt like he’d been driving for-fucking-ever. All he had was road, and more of it after that. Is this all his dumb subconscious could muster up for Heaven? Driving for eternity?

He had to admit it did feel nice to floor it and not worry about traffic, or stop signs, or cops. It was fun, and he found he’d lose himself in it if he let his mind wander too much. Song after song and the eternal sunset had him thinking that yeah, maybe this could be forever.

But his passenger seat was glaringly and blatantly empty.

Dean figured that Sam was looking for him, too, and they just couldn’t figure out how to cross paths. He recalled Ash telling them about those individual Heavens, for most people, and then heavily implying Dean and Sam were soulmates which made them both squirm. Dean just wished there was a different name for it.

It’s not like their bond broke in the last five years; soulmates meant forever, as far as he knew. So, their Heaven would always be _their_ Heaven, and this farcical adaptation of loneliness would not stand with Dean. 

_Cas_ , he prayed, again, as the radio turned over into Skynyrd. _C’mon, man, don’t leave me high and dry. Help us out._

Sam was awake, and expectedly pissed off. 

In Sam’s defense, he was usually angry, but this particular anger was more foreign. His fingertips itched with the urge to curl in so he could hit something, and a mirror would be right there, waiting. He would drive his fist into it as hard as he could, glass splintering and slicing, but it would never hurt and he would never bleed. 

He’d been angry for an estimated seventeen hours and he’d gone through exactly one-hundred and forty-three mirrors and twelve down-feather throw pillows. 

Sam sat in a circle of feathers and broken glass and his fist wouldn’t loosen.

He looked down at it. The last he’d seen it, really seen it, that fist had been trying to hold his stomach together so he wouldn’t go spilling out all over the ground. The thought of whoever was going to come across he and Dean, eviscerated and bloodied and dead on the pavement, horrified him. No one should have to see a scene like that.

So Sam had kept his guts inside, out of courtesy for the coroner. Or the Crime Scene Clean-up Crew. Sam always thought that if law didn’t work out for him, he’d be a pretty damn good Crime Scene Clean-Up Crew Guy.

He’d been stuck in Heaven for seventeen hours with no sign of his stupid brother or stupid Castiel. He’d gone in and out of wondering if they’d just left him there, abandoned him to his solitude in Heaven. Stupid Dean would probably think it was some kind of mercy, stupid Castiel would just do whatever Dean asked him to.

But Sam knew, in the end, that Dean wouldn’t stop trying to find him. Sam had made the mistake of not looking for Dean, once, and it had almost gotten them all killed. Beyond that, Dean would never put himself in a position where he could be called a hypocrite.

So, Sam fumed, lit some matches just to watch them burn, and pouted. Heaven was all good memories and anything you wish for, except for, he supposed, what he really wanted. 

He watched the flame on his match flicker as an idea began to form somewhere in the folds of his brain. Before he was even able to fully conceive it, a wooden bowl filled with petals and leaves and candles appeared at his hip. 

When he was summoning Balthazar, back when he was minus one soul and ready to kill Bobby with an axe, he’d memorized that angel summoning ritual. He had everything he needed in the bowl (of-fucking-course) and he started to construct the sigils.

Whether Castiel would adhere to the ritual, he didn’t know. But it was worth a shot.

Sam recited the chant and lit a perfectly-sized tear of rice paper before tossing it in the bowl sitting in the middle of the sigil. _Castiel_ , he thought firmly, _the dick._

Castiel watched the Winchesters die. It was not the first time, though he had one of those so-human feelings somewhere in his abdomen that had a rumbling voice which told him it was likely the last.

He’d heard Dean’s last prayer and appeared when he could. When he could was a half-second later, which was ten minutes too late. Dean was dead before he’d made the prayer. Sam was slumped against him, lifeless arms curled around his severed stomach, almost demure in his resting place.

The two of them laying dead on the pavement, hands curled together and blood inking out from their bodies in a mingled molasses crawl, the Winchesters looked elysian. Their mission was deemed complete by the Father and their earthly bodies necessary no longer. 

Castiel tried, of course, to call on their souls in Heaven to return them to their bodies. Concentrate as he did, he was unable to find even the smallest spark of Sam or Dean in the wide net of Heavens above. He even snuck into Ash’s, just to see if they’d already been found by the renegade soul.

Nothing pinged back at him and Castiel was unsettled. 

If God didn’t want him to find them, which was as it appeared, then Castiel would not try to revive them. But to cut him off completely so he couldn’t even visit felt cruel and, admittedly, very personal.

He could find Bobby Singer and Pamela Barnes, Kevin Tran and Rufus Turner. As an indulgence, he would sometimes check on the real Meg Masters; the girl who was to be an actress one day before the demon took her. 

The Winchesters remained behind a wall, a mountain of immovable power unlike anything Castiel had seen before. Standing there with their blood on his shoes, Castiel was struck with an intense wave of displacement.

Without Dean and Sam, Castiel was unsure what his mission was any longer. To protect the Winchesters at all costs had come to an end (failed). Even at their most antagonistic, Castiel was still able to hear their faint prayers to whom they wished he was. 

Quiet reigned in his head and in his spirit. 

There was a legend Castiel knew of about the tears of angels destroying the earth. Nonsense, of course, as angels didn’t have the physical faculties to cry, but Castiel thought he understood the danger. The sting he felt from his temples to his gut felt like a warning; the quiet before a flood, the stillness before a thunderclap. 

He swallowed, hard, and turned away from the Winchesters. Their image burned in his conscience and all he could wonder was whether they knew he was thinking of them. 

And then a pull, forceful and belligerent, yanked him from the mortal plane. 

A bright flash that probably would have rendered Sam blind on Earth left him mildly annoyed, with little dark spots peppering his vision. He blinked them away and there was Cas, his back to Sam, looking as Jimmy Novak as the day they’d met.

“Hey!” He called out angrily, as that appeared to be his thing in Heaven. 

Castiel turned, flexing his hands in front of his eyes. “It’s strange to be up here in a vessel,” he said, irritatingly calm. He then seemed to notice Sam (about time) and a great sadness took over his face (fuck). 

“Sam,” he said in that pitying, empathetic drawl. “Condolences.” 

Sam sighed and said yes, thank you, as Castiel took three swift steps closer to him. “Can you take me to Dean?” 

The ground suddenly became very fucking fascinating to the angel. Sam couldn’t imagine why, it was just the bright green sod that layered Jessica’s front lawn on the day he met her. It was spongy and sweet-smelling and totally not the point.

“Cas?”

Castiel shook his head and all but wrung his hands in front of him. “I don’t know where Dean is.”

Sam felt his brain short circuit with a little _pop_ of incredulity. “Is he in Heaven?”

“I don’t know,” Castiel said again. “I can’t sense him. I know he died, Sam, you both did.” He brought his big dumb blue eyes in contact with Sam’s, all round and wet at the edges.”It was gruesome.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sam sighed as he swiped a hand down his face. “Purgatory?” The suggestion was silly but everything was silly; Dean was just as likely to have been reincarnated as a naked mole rat. Castiel just shook his head. “Hell?”

The look he got for that was sharp and angry and there was the Castiel that Sam had been looking for. “He is not in Hell,” Castiel said firmly. “Crowley wouldn’t take him without taunting the two of us with it.”

He had a point. “So, he’s nowhere.” 

“He’s somewhere,” Castiel argued, useless. But Sam still felt infinitely better with him here, with someone else to share a common goal. They were going to find Dean, wherever he was, or wasn’t, or whatever, and it was going to be much easier with an angel at his hip.

Sam opened his arms and drew Castiel into a hug. Comfort spread through him like wildfire and he instantly felt as if he could just fall asleep, standing like a horse, wrapped around an awkward Castiel. But the angel was pushing him back, patting his shoulder.

“Touching an angel is a little different in Heaven,” he smiled. It was bright as the sun and just as inviting and Sam was so pleased to have him here. 

“So, how do we find Dean?” Sam asked.

Dean, as it turned out, thought Heaven was all right.

He was able to dream himself up a lake full of a fish and a cooler of beer, but for some reason his damn fishing pole kept snagging. He suspected it was because he didn’t know how to imagine up a _nice_ fishing pole, ‘cause he’d never owned one and couldn’t tell a soul how it worked. So, even in Heaven it just snagged like the one he had as a kid.

He still caught a barrel full of fish and drank a barrel full of beer and felt the sun warm and comfortable on his skin. He never burned. He flipped ribs over a grill and drank and smoked, on an eternal late summer holiday.

It was even hard to feel lonely. He remembered, sometimes, that Sam was supposed to be there at his hip, or Castiel was supposed to flutter in and stand too close and make him roll his eyes. But as soon as those thoughts stampeded into his head, Dean could taste the cool beer on his tongue and smell the toasted buns on the grill, and all other thoughts were forgotten.

The soundtrack to his death was a lot like his life. His old tapes from the Impala were all there, along with those few guilty pleasures that Dean would never admit he liked coming through the radio from time to time. With no one but God to see him, he would even sing along sometimes.

He didn’t know if God watched him. He sort of figured he did; God was probably a giant pervert in the sky just like Dean had always suspected. Never said a word to Dean when he was alive, so he didn’t really expect much now. What would be the point, anyhow?

Still, sometimes Dean thought he deserved a thank you, y’know, for saving the damn world like thirty-seven times.

But maybe this was his thank you. Maybe eternity without his parents or Sam or Castiel, without Bobby or whoever else he considered family, maybe this was all he got. Maybe God weighed him on a scale and Dean just barely ticked over to this side of Not Evil. 

Like, maybe if he hadn’t let Kate the werewolf go he’d been down in Hell painting Crowley’s toenails.

So, Dean accepted it. He wasn’t about to push his damn luck, especially up here in the bureaucratic nightmare that was Heaven’s back office. He sipped his beer, wondered if he’d ever be able to get drunk, and settled back on a creaky plastic lawn chair.

Sam peered at Castiel. “What do you mean?”

The way Sam was looking at him, Castiel could feel nothing but guilt. He toed at the yellowing, dry grass that Sam enjoyed for whatever unearthly reason and heaved a deep sigh. “I can’t sense Dean,” he repeated.

“Stop fidgeting,” Sam sniped. Perhaps he noticed Castiel’s immediate obedience or maybe he’d just heard the tone of his own voice in his head, because he immediately softened. “I’m sorry. I just want to find him. I’m sure you do, too.”

“Of course,” Castiel agreed immediately. “I couldn’t sense you, either. I tried to bring you back to your bodies.”

A wince drew Sam back until he was crossing his arms over his stomach, as if recalling his grisly death. “I don’t think that would have worked well for me,” he said quietly.

Castiel blinked at him. “You remember how you died?”

It was unusual for the dead to remember right away. Normally, the draw of Heaven was so powerful that humans drowned in its bliss, no longer worried about their mortal lives or any anguish and pain they may have felt. 

“Unfortunately,” Sam said bitterly. He paused, though, taking in a deep breath. “But nothing leading up to it. I can’t remember what Dean and I were hunting.”

“Does it matter?” Castiel asked carefully. He did not want Sam to think too hard about it, for there were rules in Heaven and pushing those boundaries could leave him in a dangerous position. Especially if Castiel wasn’t allowed to be here in the first place. 

Sam chuckled darkly. “I guess not. Unless it can help us find Dean.”

“I don’t believe so,” Castiel said gently. “The issue has nothing to do with earth. That portion of your existence is over.”

“Gee, thanks, Cas,” Sam muttered. Castiel looked around Sam’s Heaven, carefully, for the first time. All he saw were downy feathers and broken mirrors, all sat splintered and torn apart in dying grass. Out on the horizon, clouds rumbled and blocked the sun. The air was cool and humid and tense, like it felt just before the sky opened up to rain.

It was one of the most unpleasant Heavens Castiel had ever seen. Sam was glowering at him and he snapped back to attention.

“You can make this much more suitable,” Castiel suggested. “It’s your Heaven. It can be anything you want it to be.”

“Without Dean,” Sam corrected. Castiel hesitated a moment before nodding once, even knowing the answer would not satisfy Sam. But instead of getting angry, Sam’s eyes just got big and round and he reached out to grab Castiel’s wrist. “We can get him back, right?”

He was so small to Castiel, then. He looked like he did when they met, grasping Castiel’s hand with awe and honor which he’d rewarded with disdain and name-calling. He took Sam’s hands between his, this time, and tried to smile. “We will find him, Sam. Just as you found me.”

Sam’s smile appeared to be genuine and maybe the clouds thinned just the slightest bit. In truth, Castiel was so pleased that Sam had found him that he’d forgotten to think of the implications. If he’d broken through a barrier he wasn’t meant to, he surely would have known by now. Which likely meant the barrier was accidental or incidental and could potentially be broken if he asked the right questions.

However.

Dean figured, eventually, that this was where he was supposed to be. The sweet scent on the air was distracting and lulled him into a contentedness he’d never felt before. He felt his Heaven brighten, the colors saturate, everything sharpen. He heard the sounds echo louder. 

In time, everything tasted better. In time, he forgot he had to think to manifest what he wanted. Soon, before he knew he wanted it, a burger would be in his hand. Before he was thirsty, a scotch on the rocks would be on his picnic table. 

He felt safer. Contained and impenetrable. He felt okay.

And Dean, kicked up by a pool with unnecessary shades and unnecessary sunscreen, forgot he was missing.

“If we are to find him,” Castiel said, “Dean must want to be found.”

 

End Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just the beginning... 
> 
>  
> 
> [Please join me on tumblr!](http://dandelionwhiskey.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
> This will be a series with many different threads. 
> 
> If you aren't a fan of either Wincest, Sastiel, Destiel, or Wincestiel, you should still be able to read the series without seeing a pairing you dislike. The plot driven parts will be Gen or ambiguous. All the pairing/sexual pieces will be optional and fully tagged (There are no pairings in this first part but I thought I'd warn for where it intends to go). 
> 
> I've currently mapped out 8 parts to the series, but we'll see what it ends up being. Enjoy!


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